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MindGeek Owned Pornography Platform Mysteriously Announces It Is Shutting Down

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Mary Margaret Olohan Social Issues Reporter
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  • The pornography website XTube has announced that it will shut down in September, and its parent company MindGeek offered little explanation as to why.
  • Anti-pornography activist Laila Mickelwait tweeted a Monday evening screenshot of an announcement allegedly from XTube, which boasts of being “the first Adult ‘Tube Site’ on the internet.” 
  • Pornhub and MindGeek have come under serious fire following a December New York Times report in which opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof accused Pornhub of monetizing “child rapes, revenge pornography, spycam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content” and more. 

The pornography website XTube has announced that it will shut down in September, and its parent company MindGeek offered little explanation as to why.

“Like any tech company, we are constantly evaluating our content offerings and products to best serve our users,” MindGeek said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “XTube has always had a dedicated but small community, and we believe that its users and creators will be better served on one of our existing platforms, where they will be able to take advantage of wider reach and increased visibility.”

Anti-pornography activist Laila Mickelwait tweeted a Monday evening screenshot of an announcement from XTube, which boasts of being “the first Adult ‘Tube Site’ on the internet,” and is a a subsidiarity of the porn giant MindGeek. (RELATED: Sasse Demands Full Investigation After Pornhub Rapidly Changes Policies Over Allegations Of Child Sexual Exploitation)

“It’s a sad day for us at XTube,” the announcement reportedly said, “but we have to announce that after 13 years, XTube.com will be shutting down on September 5. We’re proud of the vibrant community we have built since 2008 and we’re grateful to all of you who have shared your content on our platform. Unfortunately, it’s time for us to move on to greener pastures and greater things.”

The alleged XTube statement encouraged users who wish to continue uploading content onto “our other platforms” to consider joining PornHub or the website MyDirtyHobby.

The statement did not provide a reason for why the site is shutting down, though Mickelwait suggested it was because the website has been engaged in illegal activity.

“XTube’s announced shutdown is more evidence that MindGeek’s exploitation empire is crumbling,” Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement. “This is welcome news, given the mounting evidence that MindGeek has hosted and profited from child sex abuse material, rape, sex trafficking, nonconsensual material, sexual violence and other racist and misogynistic sexual content on its myriad of pornography websites.”

“XTube’s closure is a clear victory for the movement to hold Pornhub, MindGeek, and the pornography industry accountable for their facilitation of sexual abuse and exploitation,” Hawkins added.

Pornhub and MindGeek have come under serious fire following a December New York Times report in which opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof accused Pornhub of monetizing “child rapes, revenge pornography, spycam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content” and more. (RELATED: Hawley, Lawmakers Introduce Bills Allowing Victims To Sue Pornhub, Perpetrators)

The popular pornography website has been listed as the 10th-most visited website in the world, with 3.5 billion visits a month and profits from almost three billion ad impressions every day, according to Kristof.

Following Kristof’s report, both Visa and Mastercard told the Daily Caller News Foundation in December that they were no longer allowing their cards to be used on Pornhub. Pornhub then began removing videos that were not uploaded by the site’s official partners or members of the site’s programs.

The pornography website had about 13.5 million videos before it began purging on December 13, Vox reported, and many of these videos were from unverified accounts. The DCNF confirmed December 14 that Pornhub had removed over 78% of its videos, leaving 2,913,964 videos on the site.

Pornhub also quickly announced changes to their website’s safety measures, saying that the website had “banned downloads” and “made some key expansions to [their] moderation process.” In June, thirty-four women sued MindGeek, accusing the company of being “one of the largest human trafficking ventures in the world” and “likely the largest non-regulatory repository of child pornography in North America,” according to TechSpot.

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